Basu: Is King really the best the 4th District can do?

Voters' dismissal of his vile remarks is inexcusable

Jul. 25, 2013

U.S. Rep. Steve King receives congratulations at the Santa Maria Winery in Carroll after besting Christie Vilsack and winning a sixth term in Congress in the November 2012 election. / Bryon Houlgrave/Register file photo

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There’s a lone member of Congress who voted against a simple resolution recognizing the contributions of American slaves in building the U.S. Capitol. He said America’s Judeo-Christian heritage shouldn’t be held “hostage” to people trying to guilt-trip the ancestors about slavery.

The same congressman, in opposing some jobless benefits, called 80 million out-of-work Americans “slackers.” He compared immigrants to hunting dogs, suggesting that when picking which ones to allow in, America has the “pick of the litter” and “the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” so we should not choose “the one that’s sleeping in the corner” — or, as I interpret his meaning, the Mexican.

He suggested we build an electrified fence across our border with Mexico to shock people trying to breach the border, noting, “We do it with livestock all the time.”

Those kinds of remarks, by someone who has the privilege of making laws for our country, would surely bring condemnation from most Iowans if they came from elsewhere. But when the name Steve King is attached to them, people just groan and shrug it off — and keep re-electing Iowa’s 4th District congressman, now in his sixth term.

This week, Washington is abuzz with King’s latest remarks opposing immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents as children. For every one who’s a valedictorian, he said — with absolutely nothing to base it on — “there’s another hundred out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

It’s not much different from things King has said in the past, characterizing undocumented immigrants as drug smugglers, murderers and child abusers. But reaction has been fast and furious, including from two leading Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Wrong and hateful, in Boehner’s words. Inexcusable in Cantor’s.

There was a time when anti-black, anti-immigrant or anti-gay remarks by King on the issue du jour seemed so over-the-top racist and hateful that you assumed the minute they hit the press, his future in Congress would be over. It never happened. Not when he declared that the abuse and degradation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was no worse than fraternity hazing. Not when he warned before President Obama’s first election that the “optics” of an Obama presidency would have Muslim extremists dancing in the streets. Not even after a tea party organization in Colorado canceled a speech by King for his claim that Obama favors black people over whites.

Iowans put King back in office even after he called Joseph McCarthy an American hero and suggested it would be better for Americans to wean themselves off fruits and vegetables than rely on immigrant labor. Even after he said that because of his anti-IRS feelings, he empathized with a pilot who flew a plane into a Texas building that housed IRS offices, killing an agency employee. Even after he exhorted at a rally, following House passage of health reform: “Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s take them out. Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!”

Surely, you keep thinking, this one will be the last straw.

But it never is.

Don’t King’s voters at least care about animals? He hung on to his seat last year after voting against simple restrictions on dogfights and cockfights. And that was though redistricting had brought more liberal parts of the state into his district and he had a well-financed opponent with name recognition.

How do they square King with their consciences? Do they also regard Mexicans as dogs or livestock and out-of-work people as slackers?

That would be inconsistent with new poll findings by the conservative American Action Network that 65 percent of people in King’s district support a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants.

Is it because he’s not expected to get many bills passed that voters assume he can’t do much damage? Is it because they enjoy seeing someone get a rise out of liberals and Democrats? Surely there are more thoughtful, productive Republicans to put their faith in.

Elsewhere, the Republican Party is at least paying lip service to immigrants, even if just because it needs the Latino vote. But not in still overwhelmingly white northwest Iowa.

Other people say racist things and pay a price for it. Trent Lott was forced to resign as Senate Republican leader and later left the Senate after saying that if segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, the U.S. would have avoided many problems. Thurmond had said, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”

Lott, at least, had the good sense to apologize. But King just digs in, insisting that what he says was factual. And Lott was from Mississippi. King represents Iowa, which has a history of being decent and fair-minded.

Steve King has a real problem with minorities. It leaches out of his every pore and proudly asserts itself in almost every utterance. Yet his constituents keep coming back for more.